Thread From the Sickbed

Today (with the help of herbal tea and strong narcotics) I felt almost human.  I can even pee! Yessss! Nothing like chronic illness to make you grateful for the little things.  I cleaned out my root cellar today> I was waist deep in old roots and straw shavings, amazed that the seeds I planted in May are the sustenance my family depends on in February.  Nothing makes me feel more competent and in touch with Big Mama than being able to feed myself, my friends and my family.

I’m scared I won’t be able to grow my own food again, now that I am sick, and I wonder what spring will mean to me, if not planting my own seeds and getting ready for the summer work season.  Sometimes the thought of not growing food makes me feel relief–it is hard work, and being tied to the land means not being able to travel the way I would like to.  I’ve been making my own herbal medicine for years, and I could spend the summer wildharvesting instead of cultivating.  I guess I took my body for granted, and never thought of this back to the land/homesteader lifestyle as one that would depend on being able bodied.  So many of the hindrances that this illness has brought to me have manifested as unexpected gifts, and I realize everyday all the things that I need to be grateful for and never take for granted again.

In crafting news, I shipped a sweater out today that I sold from Etsy, and my youngest daughter and I had fun carving a stamp out of rubber, dipping it in paint, and decorating wrapping paper.  It was a classic homeschool moment, where the things we do for fun each day is our learning.  The whole wide world is such a wonderful classroom to be in.  I love that I can share my art skills with her and she’s eager to learn.  However, since I was up and at em today, precious little knitting got done, though I did stay up late last night sketching ideas for new projects.  That’s me–a gagillion ideas with hals-assed follow through!

I am throwing my pindrop of a voice into the strange and hectic ocean we call the internet.  A woman who prefers to limit social interactions to face to face encounters, I find myself chronically ill, lonely, and not often able to leave my house.

I have a disease called IC (though technically i am still awaiting a diagnosis)  The condition is a chronic inflammation of the bladder, with symptoms that are like a an extreme bladder infection.  It is considered an auto-immune disease by some, and there is no cure known to western medicine.

This is the sterile prophylactic version of events.  My version is I HURT LIKE HELL.  It feels like someone’s stabbing me in the pelvis with a rusty sword while i sit impaled on fiery spikes.  Some days I have to pee approximately every 6 seconds, and other days, my bladder closes shop and doesn’t let me pee at all.  I’ve lost thirty pounds on at least 87 blasted woo woo diets, that leave me starving, ready to eat an elephant raw, but don’t make me feel better.  And f—ing is just out of the question.  I can’t drink booze or eat chocolate, travel or go to parties.  My friends rarely visit me, and I vacilate between wild and spurious hope, and soul drenching despair.

Guess you can see why no one wants to come to my house to play! What a boner kill!  A former homesteader in rural Maine who hauls her own water and chops her own wood,  political activist working for environmental and social justice, and a radical homeschooling mother of two, my active life has certainly taken an about face.  The one thing these circumstances have not been able to strip me off is my compulsive obsession with needle crafting.

I knit and crochet for hours everyday.  My loft is bursting with wildly tangled skeins of yarn.  My desk is threatening to collapse under the weight of piles of books and magazines about the yarnier side of life. I sketch and design in a notebook that never leaves my side, and I spend most of my computer time cruising Ravelry, and adding items to my Etsy shop.

Originally, I wanted to keep a blog about my crochet and knitting addiction, like so many before me, but needlecrafts have moved to the center of my life because of my illness, and the silver lining and the cloud are skipping hand in hand together.  In my political struggles, the desire for  self-determination has been the core value that has fueled my fire. The definition of self determination according to the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs is: “the right for all people to determine their own social, political, economic, and cultural development.”  It means that we as people, families and communities know what is best for us, know what we need and have the right to make those decisions for ourselves.  Working towards that goal, for me, means making sure I can take care of myself and my family so that it will be harder to take my freedom away.  It means growing my own food, making my own medicine, my own music, and my own clothes.  All of these things get me closer to being self-determinate, and lessen the chances that I will have stood in the way of someone else’s way to be self-determinate. (For example, if I grow my own food, than I don’t have to worry about there being poison in it, or have to deal with any government regulation around food, and it keeps me independent of rising food costs incurred by the depletion of cheap oil.  Meanwhile, I know that somebody else didn’t have to break their back on my behalf while I sit around and loaf, and I know that the person who picked my food isn’t getting cancer from pesticides, or being paid less than minimum wage.) See? My self-determination and theirs.

What in the hell does this have to do with chronic illness and knitting, you ask? That is the connection that this blog will explore, as you get to follow me through doctor office adventure to craft store, from private art to public pain, from the forest I call my home to the threads flying in my lap in my sickbed. Stay tuned for more rants and ravings from your favorite sickly yarn addict!